


The Not-So-Christmas Special

by Tierfal



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hanukkah, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: 10 is actually Jewish and <i>slightly grumpy</i> that no one ever thinks to ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Not-So-Christmas Special

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Apple_Pathways](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Apple_Pathways).



> Giftfic, with love and crack! ♥ Eltea was going to Hanukkah!beta for me, but I think she's still passed out after seeing 'The Hobbit' last night. That or she hates me now, because she won't answer my emails OR my texts. I'm so loooooooonelyyyyyyyyy~ ;_____;

Oh, the Doctor _wants_ to be jolly.  Jolly’s great.  Jolly’s marvelous.  Nothing wrong with jolly.

It’s just the expectation that gets to him after a while, that’s all.  Can’t take a second off of jolly in December, or everyone thinks you’ve sprouted green fur, and your heart’s shrunk, and you’ll be committing grand larceny in Whoville by sundown.

“What’s tainted your eggnog?” Donna asks cheerfully.  The Santa hat really rather clashes with her hair.

“Don’t start,” the Doctor says.

Too late.  “Something snap your candy cane?”  Donna appears to be swaying in time with ‘Jingle Bell Rock’; that or she got drunk while he had his back turned.  “Something tangle up your lights?  Was there nothing fun in your popper?”  She pauses.  “That came out wrong.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” the Doctor says, finding another section of the console to tinker with.  He pries back the cover and starts scanning with the screwdriver in an extremely busy and important and preoccupied kind of way.

“Then why are you turning into such a Scrooge, dumbo?”

The Doctor frowns.  “Don’t make me deliver the lecture on the relative ratio of functional neurons in the average Time Lord brain and the average human one again.”

“I’ll let you know if I’m having trouble falling asleep some night.”

“And don’t call me a Scrooge; I’m not a Scrooge.  Dickens and I go way back.”

Donna drops onto the jumpseat, folds her arms, and raises an eyebrow, apparently unconvinced by the more-or-less-random fiddling with the console.  “Then what’s so wrong with Christmas?”

“Nothing’s _wrong_ with it,” the Doctor says.

“You’re going to explain this,” Donna says, and how a self-deprecating temp from Chiswick who can’t use a semicolon to save her life can be so _menacing_ he doesn’t know, “or I’m going to start singing ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ as ‘Twelve Days of TARDIS’ and make it up as I go and _deliberately_ sing off-key.”

Anyone who believes the universe to be kind is unmistakably delusional.

“All _right_ ,” the Doctor says helplessly.  “If you _must_ know, this regeneration is Jewish.  Somehow.  Just trust me.”  He clears his throat.  “There you are, done.  Can we go back to our actually quite culturally interesting amalgam of winter festivals?”

Donna blinks, blinks again, and blinks a third time, and the Doctor’s spine prickles just a bit.  “You’re…”

“ _Yes_ ,” he says.  “Hope for ginger, end up Jewish; figures, really.”

“I am _not_ going to get distracted by the ginger comment, thank you,” Donna says.  “And why didn’t you just say so?  Hang on, where are we?”

The Doctor glances at the screen.  “Ah… Oregon.”

“The herb?”

“That’s oregano.  Oregon’s a state.  A United States state.  And I suppose arguably a state of mind.”

“America should do,” Donna says.  “Don’t move this box an _inch_ , or so help me I will tie it to a fencepost next time.  I’m going shopping.”

“What?” the Doctor says.

“ _Shopping_ ,” Donna says.  “You know, exchange of currency for goods and services and whatnot.  I’ll probably even come back, unless I get a better offer for time-and-space travel and saving the world—one with forty percent less running, maybe.  You never know; there are some sales on.”

“Take a coat,” the Doctor says.  “Apparently it’s raining.  What are you shopping for, anyway?”

Donna just rolls her eyes and jams her feet into a pair of rainbow-striped wellies that might be from the era of That Outfit, though the Doctor can’t quite remember.

 

 

He’s given up fiddling with the console and started playing Cat’s Cradle with some spare curling ribbon by the time Donna stamps back in, soaking wet and clutching a giant plastic bag.

“Right,” she says, shoving her dripping hair back.  “Sit your skinny arse down.  We’re having Hanukkah.”

The Doctor blinks.  “Are we?  But it’s eight days long; you can’t just _have_ i—” Donna has fixed him with the Look that makes villains cower and monsters flee.  “Hanukkah it is.”

He sits his skinny arse down on the grating, crosses his legs, and hopes for the best.

Donna unloads items from the bag.  She’s bought a menorah, a pack of candles, a rather nice dreidel, and enough gelt to tempt a dragon; and each of them gets a little blue yarmulke, which… well.

It turns out Donna hates dreidel, but she hates giving up midway through a game that involves winning chocolate even more.  The candles are from a corner store, and they send up weak tendrils of oily smoke.  The Doctor’s present is a suitably non-denominational blue tie with a motif of white snowflakes, which would look unforgivably abominable with everything he wears; and Donna got herself a pair of fuzzy slippers.  She also provided Chinese takeaway, because “the bloke at the shop said it’s traditional”, and the egg rolls are so good that the Doctor doesn’t bother to explain.

“Sodding _shin_ ,” Donna says as her dreidel spin lands.  She tosses another handful of gelt petulantly into the pot and reaches for her chopsticks.

“Donna,” the Doctor says, “happy Hanukkah.”

Donna’s mouth is full of chow mein, and her yarmulke is askew, and she is a fantastic human being.

“How the hell’s that spelt, anyway?” she asks.

Some nights—just some—it’s all worthwhile.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] The Not-So-Christmas Special](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9058264) by [Chestnut_filly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_filly/pseuds/Chestnut_filly)




End file.
